Letters of Madame de Sevigne
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Of the thirty-seven newly discovered letters by Madame de Sevigne, thirty-six are primarily of literary and social interest. Since the original discovery of many of her letters in the eighteenth century, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne, has been generally acknowledged as one of the greatest writers in the French language. The discovery of new letters of hers, even if they dealt only with purely personal matters, is a cause of excitement for anyone interested in French literature. Likewise, her letters, with their acute observations of major figures of the court of Louis XIV, are of interest to students of seventeenth-century French society. One of the new letters, however, is of dramatic and wholly unexpected significance, for it records a personal encounter--previously unknown, and entirely unexpected--between Mme de Sevigne and the English philosopher John Locke, and contains a brief summary of his political thought. This is not the place to discuss the issue of the letter's authenticity, or of the problems it poses for the historian. It is sufficient here to state that all available evidence confirms that the letter was in fact written by Mme de Sevigne to a friend, the Comte de Grinaud, in 1688. We have no proof of her encounter with Locke other than the letter itself. No grounds can be offered for supposing that she fabricated the story; she is not known to have invented episodes in any other letter, and had no reason to do so in this one. Mo
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give, is that social contract is binding on the sovereign as it is on the subjects. King James, having trodden upon the rights which M. Locke insists the English have, has ceased to be their rightful king. The ancient contract is thus dissolved, and King James is forcibly shown to the door.
Whereupon the English, or at any rate M. Locke's friends, have repeated the labor of their earliest ancestors, joining together in a new social contract, forming a new civil society--and inviting the Prince of Orange to be their new king. What, I ask you, could be more natural than that?
Ah, Grinaud, now I hear the laughter that shall only pass your lips next week as you read this. You shall turn to your lovely Comtesse and exclaim, "Alas! Our unfortunate friend Mme de Sevigne has gone mad, and is raving about the state of Nature, and the social contract, and the philosophy of the English." Yet I swear to you that this tale I have told you is nothing other than the truth, however poorly I have rendered it. So I shall beg you and madame the Comtesse to enter again into a contract of civil society with me. And to fulfill my part in this contract I shall say not one more word about M. Locke, but will pass on to you a tale recently
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Approximate Word count = 3317
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)
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